Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Again, I think the Minister misunderstands the purpose of specific amendments. With respect to the OPR and amendment No. 1130, there is a planning dimension to this, which the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media is not equipped to assess. This is the whole point, and this is why folks like Conradh na Gaeilge have put so much effort into encouraging the submission of so many amendments. Supporting, encouraging and developing Irish language-speaking communities is not just a matter of language policy, and the encouragement of language policy or education. It is also a matter of physical planning, and of what gets developed, where, and for what use. That is the whole point we are trying to make. I do not think the Minister has fully absorbed the significance of the failure of our planning system to ensure that where you have language plans, for example, the planning system has to fully understand its function in allowing those to assist and develop. The point is not to have the OPR evaluate the language element of the language plans; it is the planning element. To what extent is the planning system helping or hindering? To what extent is the development plan process helping or hindering?

To be very brief, by way of one explanation, if the Minister looks at amendment No. 369 and a couple of subsequent amendments, they have to do with that section on development plans where our local authorities have an obligation to prepare housing development strategies. Obviously, if you have an Irish language plan in a particular area or if you have a set of language-based policies for the Gaeltacht, for Irish-language planning areas or for líonraí, there is an important question to be asked in the development plan process about how the housing development strategy or housing policy assists or undermines the use of the spoken language. We had quite a lengthy debate yesterday, and I am not going to back into it, around grants of planning permissions and whether those planning permissions assist or undermine the viability of Irish language-speaking communities. I fully accept the Minister's bona fides that he wants these issues to be addressed. However, unless we ensure that our planning system and authorities are required to have, at all levels, active visibility on whether the decisions or plans they make help or hinder the development of the Irish language in specific geographical areas through planning policy and development, then we are going be in a similar position in several years' time. I know I am not going to convince the Minister but I just want to stress that. I think he fundamentally misunderstands the intention behind amendment No. 1130.